


Running Out of Time

by soft_princess



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: maleslashminis, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-22
Updated: 2008-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22510441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_princess/pseuds/soft_princess
Summary: "Glorious day for the old you, yeah?" Doyle jokes but doesn't laugh, and slaps Angel's shoulder. "No time for that shit, Angel, you been hiding too long."
Relationships: Angel/Allen Francis Doyle
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Running Out of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bookishwench in the Doyle round @ maleslashminis. Request after the fic.
> 
> Thanks to wesleysgirl for the beta.

* * *

Angel isn’t sure how he ends up in Dublin. It’s mid-March, and he hasn’t talked to anyone in months. “Better this way,” he thinks. It’s easier to keep low, not alert anyone, and keep his friends safe.

Buffy has been dead for ten months now. Angel hasn’t been back in L.A. since.

There are so many people in the streets, too many, and Angel apologises to the woman he's bumped into before retreating into the shadows of one alley. There's loud music coming up from the pub next door. Angel leans against the brick wall and sighs. He shouldn't have come here. Still isn't even sure how he got here really.

"Haven't stopped hiding from people, I see," a voice says next to him. When Angel turns to look, head snapping and hands tightening into fists, he thinks maybe--surely--he's gone crazy now.

"You're dead," he says, eyeing the ghost who is standing there with hands in his pockets and a curved smile at the corner of his mouth. His eyes are sad, almost expressionless. "Come back to haunt me?"

"Not so much," Doyle replies. He steps forward, slowly, like he's just waiting for Angel to take a step back and flee, like he's taming a wild, unstable beast.

Angel shivers, fights the urge to run or fight. "Then why did They send you here?"

"You think the Powers sent me back down here just for you? No, mate, I just ain't dead," Doyle says, and this time the smile almost reaches his eyes. He leans against the wall next to Angel, and stares into the dark.

\--

"I woke up," Doyle says, "I woke up screaming, in my bed at home, like when I was a lil' kid. Mum cooked breakfast. I couldn't remember anything. At least, nothing from the past six months or so.

"Took me a while to realize it, but things had changed. The demon got stripped away, my visions were gone. I started over... Mum said that until she heard me scream, she had no idea I'd come home."

\--

Angel doesn't move while Doyle speaks. He stays where he is, not really sure whether he believes him or not, but he still doesn't move. When Doyle stops, Angel doesn't say a word.

\--

Finally, Angel sighs and turns to Doyle. "So you think you can get back to it? Fighting? Dying again?"

Doyle shakes his head for a second, and then looks up. "Why not? Beats standing here, doing nothing."

"Then why didn't you come back to L.A.?" Angel asks, pushing himself away from the wall and turning to face Doyle.

"Didn't remember, right?" Doyle says, sighing and looking away. "Took me a while. I got a job bartending, helped Mum with the house, and then yesterday it all comes back to me. There's this voice in the back of my head saying I need to show up here for St-Paddy's. Someone's waiting for me." His laugh is short and derisive, but when he looks up, he's smiling again. "And there you are, hiding like that first time I met you. Still can't stand crowds?"

Scoffing, Angel looks between the buildings into the street. The crowd has thickened and they're getting louder; music and laughter. Happiness. St-Paddy's, it makes sense now, all those people middling about, festive. "I was here for the first St-Patrick's day. Seventeen fifty-seven," he remembers. "It was a bloodshed."

"Glorious day for the old you, yeah?" Doyle jokes but doesn't laugh, and slaps Angel's shoulder. "No time for that shit, Angel, you been hiding too long."

Angel looks at him. Really looks at him for the first time and for a minute, it's like he's really back in time. He isn't sure he deserves a second chance, but Doyle definitely does.

"Come on, have a pint with me?" Doyle asks, grabbing Angel's arm and steering him out into the open.

Angel doesn't really taste the beer, but he believes him when Doyle says Guinness is the best there is.

\--

"You know I always liked--liked you, right?" Doyle asks, drunk out of his ass, head slumped against Angel's shoulder. "You're my hero."

Angel snorts and keeps walking. He isn't really sure this is the right way to where Doyle's mother lives, but he has to keep doing something. The sun's gonna be up soon.

"No, I mean it, man, you're all hot--with the dark avenger attitude and the coat bill--billo--moving in the wind." Doyle stumbles and yelps. Angel catches him just in time, before Doyle's face hits the ground. "Thanks, man, saved my life."

They end up sleeping in an empty warehouse for the day because Doyle passes out and can't tell Angel which way to go. Angel finds some cardboard boxes to use as mattress, and tucks his coat around Doyle.

With Doyle asleep next to him, and the sun high in the sky, Angel tries not to think too hard about the one time he _didn't_ save Doyle's life, and all the other people he failed. Maybe Doyle's right, maybe there really isn't time for this shit. Angel had believed it once.

He could believe it again.

\--

Angel wakes up around dinner time; Doyle's still asleep. Somehow, he's wrapped himself up against Angel, and no matter how hard Angel tries--which admittedly isn't that hard, because he's surprisingly reluctant to wake Doyle up--he won't let go.

\--

When they arrive in L.A., it's almost April. The hotel's not as dark as Angel expected it to be--he really thought they'd all be gone by now, that they'd have moved on to better, less dangerous things. Wesley's a bit banged up with one arm in a sling, Gunn's glaring from where he's sitting cleaning his axe, but it's Cordelia Angel can't take his eyes away from. She looks exactly the same.

"What the fuck took you so long?" she starts, voice pitchy and furious. When she finally notices Doyle, standing in the doorway with an uncertain look on his face, Cordelia stares, mouth opened, shocked into silence.

Which is the moment Wesley chooses to speak: "Did you know Buffy's come back from the dead?" 

\--

Getting back into the routine is almost easy. They have an apocalypse to avert and demons to fight that very night, and after that, it's just like he's never left. Except that Doyle is here now--always standing close to Angel, and grinning up at him every time Angel looks over--and Cordelia stops mid rant every once in a while just to stare at him. Them, Angel realizes.

Wesley consults his books, Gunn gets Doyle up to speed, and Cordelia takes him shopping. It really is just like old times.

\--

Angel wakes up one afternoon--warm, much too warm--and finds Doyle's body slumped against his own on the bed, under the covers even. Skin against skin. Angel looks at him--still awed that Doyle is _here_ , alive--touches a naked shoulder, a warm, equally naked back, and thinks "okay, sure." He pushes the covers down, tucks Doyle in carefully, and spoons behind him, one arm over Doyle's mid-section.

Doyle mumbles in his sleep, squirms slightly against Angel's chest, but doesn't wake up.

\--

It's two months before Angel actually gets it--Cordelia calls him clueless, and she has a point, Wesley and Gunn just roll their eyes at him, and Doyle, well, he's Doyle--and this time, when he wakes up to find Doyle there in the bed, Angel kisses him.

It's scary--and there aren't a lot of things Angel's _really_ afraid of except for this--but there are worse things to be than someone's hero.

Especially when that someone gives just as good as he gets.

**Author's Note:**

> Request:   
> **Male character they want paired with Doyle** : Angel  
>  **Things they want in the fic** : Doyle never died, Guinness, St. Patrick's Day  
>  **Things they *don't* want in the fic** : non-con, death  
>  **Preferred maximum rating** : R  
>  **Is comics canon okay**?: yes [not required]


End file.
